For the past 39 college seasons, the Ashland University’s softball team has played their home games at Brookside Field. When the spring season starts this year, first pitch for the AU Eagles softball team will be at their new field, “Deb Miller Field.”

For years and years, Ashland University has been wanting to move their softball team away from Brookside Park and Brookside West for any games or practices being held.

Ashland’s University Emlyn Knerem, softball head coach and All-American pitcher, is too familiar with Brookside Park.

“In the past no one knew where we were  in terms of the student body,” said Knerem. “No one knew where we played so we missed out on the student population coming out.”

Rick Ewing, Vice President of Operations and Planning, talked about how a new softball field was a priority that they could never pull the strings for.

“The softball field has been a thought for the past 5-8 years, we just could never get the funding to make it happen,” Ewing said. “The Archer family stepped in and helped this process move forward.”

In March of 2021, Dr. Carlos Campo, Bob Archer, Coach Knerem and 3 softball players had dinner and that is where the new softball stadium talks really came into fruition.

“We scheduled this dinner and I did a whole presentation where I talked about our tradition, our program, our history of softball here in the city of Ashland,” said Knerem. ” It really gave Bob Archer a better picture of what we were talking about.”

After that dinner, Bob Archer generously committed to a donation for the AU softball team to build their new home.

According to the softball team’s “Give To Softball Stadium” project, the Archer family agreed to match all the donations that the team brings in with their own $650,000 donation for the new Deb Miller Field.

Another donation group is helping to build more things for the stadium including restrooms, a concession stand, and a variety of other ballpark essentials.

Knerem expressed her gratitude for her team “having their own home” and is grateful for close home games on campus.

“This is a long time coming…when we play on different fields we have no permanent fence, scoreboard problems, foul poles in the wrong places, the field lines not being done correctly, practice fields not ready and the list goes on and on.”

Now that the AU softball team has their own field, the opportunities branch out to what can happen on and off the field.

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